


five things Anya buys to make her more human (and one thing she doesn't)

by womanaction



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Copious Angst, F/M, Gen, it's about the money baby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:55:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24483133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/womanaction/pseuds/womanaction
Summary: Anya's time as a human, in five purchases.
Relationships: Xander Harris/Anya Jenkins
Comments: 5
Kudos: 20





	five things Anya buys to make her more human (and one thing she doesn't)

**Author's Note:**

> This fic format will never die!
> 
> Also, some moments of the timeline are played a little fast and loose. Apologies for any small inconsistencies - this idea was bugging me and I wanted to get it all out as soon as possible.

_1._

She never really got money as a human, the first time around. What’s the thing people say: “Money is power”? Back then, she didn’t realize she needed power. She was happy enough then, she supposed. It’s all kind of vague and grainy now, like an old movie.

Anyway, then she got a ton of power. Way more than money could buy. And she had money, too, for the rare occasions that she decided to buy her own jewelry or champagne or gowns instead of just taking them or generating them from someone else’s wish.

Then she lost the power, and most of the money too. The echoes of the wish didn’t leave her with nothing, exactly. She had everything she needed to keep up the veneer of a – what had D’Hoffryn said, an emancipated minor? She had a tiny studio apartment, a tinier amount of cash, and enough designer clothes to catch Cordelia’s attention.

What did humans do with money, again?

A flock of teenagers passed her. She instinctively strained her ears when she heard “wish.”

“I wish I still had my fake,” one girl lamented.

“I mean, they don’t usually check at the Bronze,” the other girl said, in what sounded like a comforting voice.

A fake what? The Bronze…

Oh! Drinking. She remembered drinking as a human. She had never been that interested – it was much more of Olaf’s thing – but a beer was actually starting to sound really good.

Unfortunately, it turned out that Girl #2 was misinformed regarding the ID situation.

Still, after her plans to regain her power fell through, it’s not like she had anything better to do. So Anya started visiting the Bronze more regularly, listening to the human music and getting to know the bartenders.

A young man with glasses, named Tom, never seems to check the IDs. She scrutinized him. He was handsome enough, she thought, and then wondered why she thought that. Stupid human body hormones. _Teenage_ human body hormones.

He had nice hands.

Hands that would stab her in the back, certainly. But they were capable of handing her beer, and gathering up the cash she handed over. The first purchase she made as a new human, she thought as she sipped it. It was pleasant – the bubbles, the bitterness, and the slight loss of control. She found her fingers tapping the bar in time to the music.

“The influence of alcohol improves the experience of music,” she remarked, mostly to herself.

Tom caught her eye and made an expression she could not quite interpret. “You want another?”

“Yes, I would like another beer! And some…chips. And…how much are you compensated for this job?”

_2._

Anya did not receive a call back after her interview at the Bronze, and she was becoming increasingly aware that human life was expensive. Even without the expenses she heard mentioned at the Bronze – rent, car payments, student loans – her store of cash was beginning to shrink.

Soon she became aware of the existence of “thrift stores.” It turned out she was thrifty. She sold the designer clothes at what would have been a loss if she had paid for them. It still noticeably improved her finances. Then she began to explore the clothes humans considered “old-fashioned.”

Above a rack of dresses, she noticed a poster of a woman with short, curly blonde hair and a knee-length dress. She was attractive. Anya felt something like jealousy – no, envy. She wanted what that woman had. She wanted to be that woman. She supposed she could grant her own wish.

She found a few similar dresses, and as she paid in cash she asked the clerk, “How can I get my hair like that?”

That evening, Anya returned to her stiflingly small apartment with the new dresses, a bottle of hair dye, and hair-curling equipment. She regarded her purchases curiously, wondering if she had wasted money. But she felt something looking at them, and at herself in the mirror as she tried on the dresses. She looked like someone new, someone exciting and fashionable.

She smoothed the skirt and addressed the mirror. “Hi, I am Anya.”

The Anya in the mirror looked pleased to meet her.

_3._

As she and Xander began to go out more frequently, she found herself spending less money on her own drinks and food, and more on clothes, hair dye, and often, contraception.

“Thanks for picking up the condoms,” a post-coital Xander mumbled sleepily.

“You’re welcome! Thank you for the sex,” Anya replied brightly.

Xander opened one eye, and gave her a look that she now recognized as “fondness.” “Thanks for the sex,” he echoed in a tone that was probably sarcastic.

She snuggled deeper into him, momentarily content. She considered whether she could go for another orgasm. Xander cleared his throat against her, then said, “You know…there’s this thing at the Bronze tomorrow.”

“A thing?”

“Yeah, an event-type thing. Vintage swing music. I thought, you know, that might be kind of your thing.”

“My thing?”

He gestured at the dress she had been wearing, now in a pile on the basement floor.

Anya had not considered that she could have “a thing.” This pleased her. “Yes! It is my thing. We should go.”

“Cool,” Xander said, falling asleep.

It turned out that Anya liked dancing. The feeling of abandon was exhilarating. She danced to every song, with or without Xander.

“I like this music,” she said breathlessly as he returned from the bar. She sipped the cocktail he held out. It was fruity, and cheap. Was this also her “thing”?

“Yeah, I thought you might,” Xander said. She did not think this tone was sarcastic.

The next day, Xander accompanied her back to the thrift store to show her what an old record player looked like, and to help her pick out a few records. “You know, I’ve never been to your apartment.”

“Is that a hint?” she asked, surprised. “It’s very small. There isn’t much to see.”

“Does it smell like bleach?”

“No. But it doesn’t smell like you, either.”

The corner of his mouth twitched up. “Well, hey, I could come over and help you get this set up.”

She bought the record player and albums in cash. “This is an investment!” she said excitedly. “Let’s set it up, and dance! And then we can have more sex.”

Xander elbowed her gently, probably to tell her that it was inappropriate to discuss sex in front of the middle-aged female cashier.

Of course, it was really none of the cashier’s business. She had heard her saying something about babies women couldn’t afford before, though, so maybe that was why. “Don’t worry! We use contraception!”

“Here’s your receipt,” the cashier said quickly. “I think I hear the phone in the back.”

_4._

Anya had always slept naked. It seemed practical – why wear something constricting and uncomfortable when you don’t need to? As a human, it was twice as practical – why spend time and valuable money on a whole other set of clothes that needed to be washed?

But after repeated instances of Xander becoming frustrated or embarrassed, and after watching a few old films during a “Scooby movie night,” she decided to head over to the big department store and buy them pajamas. Matching, of course. They were going to be married, and she had a vague sense that was the kind of thing that married couples did.

She loved the smell of the department store. It smelled like money – not like actual money, which was kind of papery and full of hand sweat, but like the abstract concept of money. _Here are all the things you can buy_ , it seemed to say, a whiff of fragrance counter here, a metallic scent of cookware there. She wasn’t very good at cooking (it had been much simpler when she was a human), but they had their whole lives together so she had registered for quite a lot of pots, pans, and assorted gadgets. Surely she’d figure it out eventually.

Anya ran her hand over the silk pajamas. This was not the kind of thing she could buy in a thrift store. This also wasn’t the kind of thing she had inherited from alt-Cordelia fake-Anya – tank tops and shorts with brands emblazoned on the buttocks was more that style. Vengeance Anya never would have bothered, and human Aud…

She hadn’t thought that name in a long time. Anyway. Her clothes were itchy and she’d been unhappy. Or rather, she’d been happy, and then very unhappy, so unhappy that it retroactively ruined all the happiness like a bad ending to a good movie.

And none of those Anyas had had Xander in the way that she did now – hers, pledged for life, pending only some silly paperwork and dress-up. They both had important human grown-up jobs, with real salaries. They deserved matching pajamas, didn’t they? Wasn’t that what love and marriage were about?

_5._

Anya liked Buffy, she really did. Sure, she was a bit self-righteous, as most Slayers tend to be, and Anya hated that there seemed to be a part of Xander that was just Buffy’s and she couldn’t touch…but she liked her.

One irritating thing about Buffy was that she always wanted them to take pictures for every little occasion. Thanksgiving ritual sacrifice? Picture. Christmas ceremonial log roasting? Picture. New Year’s self-poisoning with excessive alcohol? Pictures, even after everyone drank too much and their hair looked bad. She had to be stopped.

After Buffy, well, you know, died, but before she got better, Anya was tasked with sorting through some old photos to move to the attic. The photos meant nothing to her, a fact she tried to explain to the others, but she dutifully made organized piles for birthday celebrations, vacations, and school events.

She paused over a photo with Joyce and a man she didn’t recognize. It must be Buffy’s father, she realized. Scum. If she had been her old self, she would have cursed him six ways to Sunday. Or maybe seven. She wasn’t sure how the phrase went or what it meant exactly, but she did know Hank – that was his name, written on the back of the photo – would wish he was dead after abandoning his children and not even picking up the phone to hear that his ex-wife had died.

But he didn’t look scummy here. He was rather handsome, actually. All a trick, of course. But it was Joyce she couldn’t look away from. Her eyes were dancing, like she had just heard a particularly good joke. She was happier than Anya had ever seen her, and now she was dead and her marriage was too.

That day, Anya bought a photo album. She carefully slotted in the one candid photo from the pile of herself with Xander, from when they had first started dating. She didn’t like her hairstyle, and her teeth looked big and weird; Xander wasn’t looking at the camera and he was wearing that shirt she had begged him to burn. They both looked terribly unattractive.

It was her new favorite picture.

_1._

_At one point, Xander bought this for me._ She twisted the ring on her finger, wondering. _Where did he go?_

There were a few different jewelry stores in town. She went in each of them in turn, trying to picture Xander, the Xander-that-was-hers in each one. Did he buy her ring in this crappy strip mall, foreshadowing the crappy way in which he was going to leave her? Or did he go to this nice place in the mall, trying to give her a dream that she could never have?

The ring weighed heavy on her finger, but she wore it around anyway, gritting her teeth. Did he flip through the pages of the bridal magazines posed ever-so-appealingly? Did he have an idea about what to get, or did he just rush blindly in and point at the first shiny thing with a low enough price tag?

She was reviewing the meager options at the pawn shop when the cashier inquired, “Buying or selling?”

“Oh. Um. Neither.” A moment too late, she added, “Thank you.” A little human-ism that Xander would never be able to appreciate her learning.

“Sure.”

She looked back at the rings, wondering what their stories were. Jilted women like herself? Men having second thoughts?

“Actually, how much could you give me for this?” she asked suddenly, pulling the ring off her finger.

The guy took a look at it and gives her some number, seemingly without thought. She should bargain with him, argue. She’s out a lot of money from the wedding, after all, and she doesn’t have dual incomes to look forward to. She could use the money, to buy…

To buy…

Well, something. Surely she’d think of something that could help her feel less like she was dying all over again every minute of every day.

“I’ll take it.”

“You want cash or store credit?”

Anya didn’t even bother to look around. “The cash. Please. In the biggest bills you’ve got.”


End file.
